


On Making Apples Fall

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Partnership, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint trains with Natasha the way he does everything with Natasha. What other people think about that doesn’t matter. [Written for Porn Battle.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Making Apples Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Porn Battle XIV for prompts _William Tell, trust_

Rogers doesn’t like it. Clint likes Rogers, and doesn’t feel insulted, but he doesn’t stop. They train with live weaponry; he trains with real arrows, and he trains with Natasha. He lets arrows go towards his targets and she dances between them as they fly. Clint no more thinks he could hit her than he thinks he could fly. (Maybe in this crowd he should come up with something a little more implausible. This morning Clint had breakfast with someone who brings thunder down on his enemies, so those are getting harder to find.)

There is no one’s body he knows better than hers – even his own he only knows reversed. Natasha’s body he knows forwards and backwards and inside out, to the last inch of her. He knows where she will be in five seconds when he sees the muscle move in her leg, and he fires to miss her. 

Clint trains with Natasha because he could train with nothing less precious to him and still know that his aim is as good as it’s going to be. He will no more hit her without meaning it than he will sprout another head. (Better, but still not guaranteed. Clint isn’t sure what Stark and Banner do down there in the lab.)

Natasha flies into a series of flips; Clint fires into the gaps she leaves behind as she goes. He is used to moving into spaces as she moves out of them. He is used to moving in the same studied deliberate paths her body makes.

Clint and Natasha don’t usually go into the field side-by-side. Same missions, different angles. It goes both ways: Clint has held stock still in battle knowing that in a moment a bullet was about to pierce the chest of the faster-than-he-looked thug pointing a knife at Clint’s neck. Natasha knows Clint as well as he knows her. 

Natasha makes a grab for one of the bars, her arms straining in the hold but not threatening to drop. She has pinned Clint to a bed, a wall, a mat. He has looked up to see her smiling down at him, thinks he knows her true smile better than anyone living. Her teeth have marked every part of his body; he has kissed every part of hers, laughing and bloody and alive. 

Clint rolls into a tumble, firing as he straightens up. She twists in the air, turning over his head. She drops onto his shoulders, flipping down to a handstand and another roll. They have started that way before, testing each other’s reflexes, still new. Back when she was still wordlessly asking with every punch and kick why he hadn’t just killed her. Sliding into her that first time, the night after their tenth mission, had not been an answer, but just another part of the only thing he had still needed to know about her. She will be where he needs her to be, when he needs her there. And he will do the same for her. Everything else is the trappings other people make. 

Clint can hear Stark muttering half-heartedly about circus freaks. Clint ignores him. Natasha walks over to the table at the far side of the room. She takes a gulp of water and then picks something up. She waits until she is in front of Clint again to get his attention.

She whistles, and throws the apple above her head. Clint waits until it is at its highest point and fires. The arrow hits the target at the end of the range; the apple is bisected and falls in two pieces, one either side of Natasha. She catches one, and bites into it with a crunch. There is a dead silence from the rest of the gym. Natasha looks back at Clint. “If there is apple juice in my hair, I am blaming you.” It says something about their relationship that although she asked him to shoot the thing, that seems fair.

Stark whistles, though it takes Clint a moment to place the tune. 

“Smart,” Clint says.

“Hey, you started it.”

Clint didn’t start anything. 

Rogers sighs and makes a face. “Clint, you really shouldn’t-.”

Natasha interrupts him. “I threw the apple, Captain. If I doubted his aim, and did it anyway, then I would deserve to be hit.” She stretches her body out, one long reach towards the ceiling, and offers Clint a bite of the apple. “Coming?”

He does not need to say ‘I’m right behind you’ – his body turns towards her, and follows.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] On Making Apples Fall](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4509327) by [BlackEyedGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




End file.
